May 2010

Long-term confinement takes a toll on the emotional health of prisoners. Incarceration in and of itself is a hardship. It's designed to be. However, even beyond the obvious factors such as living in a noisy, violence prone environment and having to be confined to a small space, there are the unseen psychological components which most people who think of correctional facilities don't even consider...

To touch on several of these, one of the biggest fears an inmate has is being forgotten about. As time goes on you begin to feel as if life is passing you by. Your loved ones are able to get along without you. And, as is often the case, family members die or they move on. Visits and letters become less frequent. You start to notice that you're losing touch with those you care about.In addition, many of these guys find themselves getting served with divorce papers. For some it may happen shortly after their arrest. While for others the marriage may linger for awhile. But when the wife cannot take her spouse's prolonged absence anymore, to include her inconvenient and expensive trips to visit her husband, those divorce papers become her ticket to freedom. For her they can be the key to a new life, with a new man.Then there are the kids. Oftentimes when the wife wants to end the relationship, in addition to filing for divorce she will also petition the court for an order of child protection. And it is not necessarily because of child abuse. Most of the time it is simply because the father is absent from his son or daughter's life.In the mindset of the judge, an incarcerated father is incapable of properly raising his children. This is not always the case, of course. Some dads do manage to help rear their children, albeit from a distance. Nevertheless, from the court's viewpoint, he's a bad parent. Because of past criminal activity of some kind, he's subsequently deemed as one who poses a threat to his kids. His imprisonment causes him to be seen as a loser and a failure, and a poor example of what a father should be. So an "Order of Protection" is just the kind of legal document that will prevent the incarcerated father from having any further contact with his children. And such an Order of Protection will remain in effect even after he is released from custody, unless he chooses to go through the lengthy and complicated process of filing his own petition with the court to reconsider the Order.Overall it is a sad situation. I've known men who haven't seen or heard from their kids in many years, even for a couple of decades. They don't even know where their children, now adults themselves, are. And perhaps just as sad is that many of these children have been told, falsely, by other family members, that their father is dead. They grow up thinking that a parent is deceased, while he is really alive but incarcerated. This scenario happens often.Yet for those who've been fortunate enough to remain in contact with their children - being that some marriages and relationships have actually survived incarceration - there is a gnawing pain from within having to watch your children grow up without you being at home with them. Gone is the day-to-day contact. Taking the kids to the zoo or to a baseball game or for a trip to the beach are not a part of your life, nor can they be. And you cannot attend your son or daughter's graduation. Being in prison, you're the missing parent. It's a pain that only an imprisoned parent knows.D.B.